If You Have To Fail -- And You Do -- Fail Forward

Mike Maddock
, ContributorI write about innovation and solving problems with disruptive ideas.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus

When he said the world was round

They all laughed when Edison recorded sound

They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother

When they said that man could fly…

For a lyricist, Ira Gershwin was a pretty darn good historian. My bet is he was OK with his failures, too. Sure, he wrote dozens of songs (such as Someone toWatch Over Me, I Got Rhythm, They Can’t Take That Away From Me [and, of course, They All Laughed quoted above]) that are now standards, but he wrote hundreds more that very few people can recall.

By any objective measure, we would call them failures, and yet as I said, I am sure Gershwin was all right with that. Why? Because the most inventive people are usually the best at failing forward, i.e., learning from what went wrong.

Columbus did, indeed, insist the world was round and then promptly missed America on his first attempt. And, of course, the Wright brothers claimed flying was possible and nearly killed themselves trying to make it happen. But they failed forward and became the fathers of aviation.

(Time for the obligatory Apple reference: Did you know that Steve Jobs was a repeat failure? He launched NeXT Computer—a hardware failure that most don’t remember because he turned it into a software success. Many believe that the failed Newton eventually became the iPhone. Yep, he knew how to fail forward.)

And, of course, Albert Einstein, whose very name we use as a short-hand for describing someone as a genius, was a lousy student. (As were many successful CEOs and entrepreneurs.) He literally failed his way through academics. I deeply wish I had used this reference during Chemistry I. It might have helped Mr. Peters understand my creative take on chemistry.

My point: Failure isn’t fatal; in fact, it is actually REQUIRED for innovation success—as long as you don’t freak out, make catastrophic mistakes or (ironically) fail to learn from it.

You need to accept the fact that you are going to fail if you are going to do your best work, and you need to make sure that everyone on your team—and, indeed, in your entire company—understands it, as well. You need to free them from the innovation-limiting shackles of perfection; don’t let them ruin good with perfect.

Innovation is Iterative

Great innovation, like great people, typically is not born; it is the result of trial and error. The phrase, “Be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet” is a healthy mantra for most of us—and most of our new ventures.

One reason that’s true is that in order to make a product or service everything it can be, it needs to be repeatedly soft launched with both internal stakeholders and external customers. This means literally sending the idea—be it a product or a service—into a limited part of the marketplace with the full understanding that it will be modified (perhaps extensively) based on how customers and consumers react.

For successful launches to happen, a team must be OK with the premise that they are starting with what some may consider a half-baked idea—one that very well may fail as constituted. You must make this OK. Tell your team that the real failure is fear of launching an idea until it is perfect. (By that time, someone else could have beaten you to the punch, or the market may have moved on. A perfect CD player isn’t going to find much of a market these days.)